Maya is the founder of Memetales, a revolutionary marketplace for children’s picture books. Memetales opened its doors in March of 2010 and has been growing steadily ever since. She didn’t just stop with Memetales. Maya is also a founding board member of MomItForward and co-founded ReadingSocialMedia, a social media book club.

Maya is also dedicated to helping women realize their own potential. In fact, she will host a panel at GeekGirlCon ‘12 called “Here is Your Cape. You are a Superhero. Now Act Like One.” Join Maya on Saturday from 11:30 a.m. to 12:20 p.m. for this panel, and learn how you can achieve your goals. As the title implies, we can all be superheros with the right equipment. Maya will show us how to gather our own tools so we can succeed. You will learn why you should reach for the stars and how to quell that voice inside telling you that you can’t achieve your goals.

We are lucky to have someone like Maya in Seattle, and look forward to sharing her with all of you at our convention (have you bought your passes yet?).

In the meantime, leave us a comment with your favorite children’s book!

As a trans woman, should I now infer that I am not validated as a ‘geek girl’ and therefore no longer welcome at any forthcoming conferences? Shame on Bisineer for the cheap joke, straight out of the gate, full of tripe and insensitivity. So sorry GeekGirlCon would chose this for promotional material: I had honestly thought more highly of you.

Emily – this is certainly not a sentiment we would EVER want to promote. Too often, we can fall into the trap of not recognizing the impact of these words on various people. Thank you sincerely for raising it. I am going to remove the video, but for those who would like to comment on the video, I can provide the link (but, given when Emily has raised, would prefer not to keep it up).

Thank you for your prompt and fair-minded response. I hope you understand that my reaction was not of hyper-sensitivity or knee-jerk emotionalism. These comments are very hurtful, invalidating, and quite frankly creating a sense of feeling entirely unwelcome. And I had always treasured GeekGirlCon as a welcoming and open space.

I absolutely recognize this. GeekGirlCon does strive to be a completely welcome and open space — and we rely on our community to help us do that. It is incredibly important to shed details on how content makes us feel, especially people who have experiences that aren’t the same as ours. This is the best way to have a dialogue about a topic, so thank you for raising this.

Er…while removing the video [and still offering to provide the link on request? Whaa?] weeks later *after being called out on it* is better than no response at all, saying that it’s “not a sentiment we would ever want to promote” and that “we can fall into the trap of not recognizing the impact of these words on people” and thanking Emily for “raising the point” (as opposed to just saying like ‘we’re sorry, that was p blatantly transphobic and we screwed up by posting it’) sounds kinda hollow to me. :s

I mean, maybe I’m wrong! Buuut I find it hard to believe that *no one* watched for the five seconds it takes for Bisineer to crack a transphobic joke before posting it on the site. And, y’know, I find it sorta hard to believe that people involved with GeekGirlCon (or really anyone ever, jeez) wouldn’t ‘recognize the impact of’ calling geeky trans women ~geek dudes with sex changes~. Like, even if you really do believe that trans women are ~actually dudes~ [with sex changes], you have to have *some* idea that it’s a pretty offensive thing to say, right?

So….yeah. I had been hoping to go to GeekGirlCon next year but this [and the response so far, tbqh] kinda screams ‘lol trans ladies will never ~really~ be welcome here, never ever’ so uh. ._.

It was my error in not fully hearing the remark in the video until this was raised and I still want to say thank you to everyone for posting and that I am incredibly sorry and most definitely was wrong in having it up on our website.

Emily – I really apologize. I really do. I certainly did not do it to offend anyone.

The talk was given years ago and I will tell you I knew a lot lesser than i know now. It was so long ago that I had no idea what it was that offended you. Thanks to geekgirlcon, I really did get educated.

I hope you can understand that people do make mistakes …caused by ignorance. I have learned since (thanks to you bringing it up) .

Thank you Maya! We all make mistakes, misspeak, or speak without understanding the impact of our words.. When it happens we hope we learn from them. Heck, I *am* trans and I have said things in the past which I understand could be hurtful to some gender variant folks

Thank you so much for your heartfelt apology. It means so much. I hope your presentation goes wonderfully!

I sincerely appreciate the apology and your recognition as to why that kind of humour really does hurt, offend, and creates unnecessary unpleasantries. I think it was especially troubling since, given the nature of the venue, maybe trans people might have reason to hope for more acceptance/understanding than might be encountered in other kinds of social spheres.

Regardless, your self-reflection on the matter is greatly appreciated, and I thank you for it.

She is disgustingly transphobic in the first 5 seconds of this video. Trans women are women too. Maya, this attitude towards trans people is a big disappointment. I do hope you get a lot of people telling you that this was entirely inappropriate and just plain wrong. This hatred of trans people is not ok. We are all human and deserve to be treated as such.